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Maintaining a Positive Play Environment

Dungeons & Dragons Online Player Guideline: Help Maintain a Positive Play Environment!
Our Mission
It is the mission of the Dungeons and Dragons Online In-Game Moderation Team to provide a safe, positive, fun and friendly play environment for all of our customers. We believe that a positive play environment breeds a strong and unified community, and that building a friendly and helpful community will help prevent the “toxic player stigma” that often becomes associated with online communities and games.

What Constitutes a Toxic Player?
A toxic player, plainly stated, is any player within a game whose verbal response to live game situations is consistently negative, abusive, inappropriate and generally unwanted. This type of behavior often results in a war of words that detracts from the game experience that we want all of our customers to enjoy. Toxic players will sometimes cause such distress that they end up causing other players to respond and react in ways that they normally would not. The best way to deal with a toxic player is to not react and simply report them. We will work hard to keep players who show consistent abusive and toxic behavior out of the game, while also working hard to educate players who occasionally slip. We know that as humans we sometimes respond and react in ways that are not typical of our behavior and will always try to educate and warn first.

How to Report
It is important for us to provide all customers with a fast and effective way to report bad behavior. We accomplish this goal through the right-click “Report Harassment” feature that’s available in every chat window. Reporting in this way will send notification to the Dungeons & Dragons Online In-Game Moderation Team for immediate review. Keep in mind we will not provide information about any action taken against another player, so unlike other customer service tickets you will not hear back from us after submitting a report. We will be taking action against players who violate our Code of Conduct to ensure that our player environment is positive for all friendly and well intentioned protectors.
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Types of Violations
There are a number of specific classifications for conduct violations that we want to discuss here. We’ve included a brief description of each violation type below.

Verbal Abuse is any chat behavior that is aggressively targeting a specific player or guild with ongoing name calling, bullying, blaming, threatening language or hate speech.

Inappropriate Language is any communication that contains excessive expletives vulgarity and all forms of hate speech. Keep in mind that you can turn your profanity filter off/on via your options menu. We will not be taking action against non-targeted language that’s automatically blocked by our profanity filter. If you see language that should be blocked by the profanity filter, but is not, please let us know and we’ll look into adding that language to our filter system.

Open Discussion for All Adventurers
This thread will remain open for the community to discuss our in-game moderation plan and our mission to create and foster a positive play environment for all players. Feel free to provide feedback, ask questions, make suggestions and discuss.

Players who continually kill a dragon or giant in FoT before the other half of the pair is ready even after being told about the mechanics of the raid and asked not to kill them until it's called?

People who intimidate pull the dragons in FoTP to the center when the meridian is vulnerable, and everyone is told to attack the meridian?

Especially when the individual is on a multi TR build, and is a well known player - you know the type who are bored with the game, but failed to move on, and are simply sowing discord.

What about verbal abuse that is done via voice communication, which contains no filter. How do you plan on following up on such reports?

Over all I think this is great, but seems kind of a whitewash statement. It doesn't consider how most harassment happens. I'm not going to report someone if you're not going to take action - even though I strongly agree maintaining a positive environment is good for the game.

For example
Players who continually kill a dragon or giant in FoT before the other half of the pair is ready even after being told about the mechanics of the raid and asked not to kill them until it's called? [etc... snip]
Thank you

Right - ran into 2 party members in the Deathwyrm raid 2 nights ago on Thelanis that were repeatedly sabotaging the light puzzle mirrors. Was informed that they were also known to jump the gun on the end fight - locking out the rest of the party. Before that happened, we ended up messaging the other members of this raid and exited - reforming in another group. But it still cost us all at least 30 minutes.

All that to say these things:
1. I will not tolerate 'griefing' in a quest. If there's a way to report that as part of this policy, then I am all for it. But I personally have a no tolerance policy. You do it once - I won't run with you again.
2. I would also like to see a means for punting such people from a quest while in progress to avoid the trouble illustrated above. I realize this is a lot more problematic, for there could be leaders who might be inclined to play games by jettisoning people just prior to the end chest, for instance. If I knew there would be GM's who could be quickly responsive to an inquiry as outlined in the OP, then that would work... but it will be interesting to see how this policy works.

Insofar as inappropriate language is concerned - I know most players are adults, but I would like to see the chatting cleaned up considerably. There are some kids around, but besides that - most of the stuff I hear with the considerable profanity and sexual innuendo laced in it should be curbed. I haven't run into very much hate/racist speech... well, unless you count halflings... but a cleaner, nicer chat would make for a nicer experience all around.

Right - ran into 2 party members in the Deathwyrm raid 2 nights ago on Thelanis that were repeatedly sabotaging the light puzzle mirrors. Was informed that they were also known to jump the gun on the end fight - locking out the rest of the party. Before that happened, we ended up messaging the other members of this raid and exited - reforming in another group. But it still cost us all at least 30 minutes.

All that to say these things:
1. I will not tolerate 'griefing' in a quest. If there's a way to report that as part of this policy, then I am all for it. But I personally have a no tolerance policy. You do it once - I won't run with you again.
2. I would also like to see a means for punting such people from a quest while in progress to avoid the trouble illustrated above. I realize this is a lot more problematic, for there could be leaders who might be inclined to play games by jettisoning people just prior to the end chest, for instance. If I knew there would be GM's who could be quickly responsive to an inquiry as outlined in the OP, then that would work... but it will be interesting to see how this policy works.

Insofar as inappropriate language is concerned - I know most players are adults, but I would like to see the chatting cleaned up considerably. There are some kids around, but besides that - most of the stuff I hear with the considerable profanity and sexual innuendo laced in it should be curbed. I haven't run into very much hate/racist speech... well, unless you count halflings... but a cleaner, nicer chat would make for a nicer experience all around.

I was in that raid, and several others with the same offenders. I know of dozens of reports to the +GMs+ over several months, but nothing changes. They have ruined Von5s and numerous other quests and raids. I've dropped group when they have joined, warned the leaders via tell, and heard back later that I was right about the griefing.

"The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves." Niccolò MachiavelliThelanis: ArbixCompletionist (23rd Life), ArbySoul, ArbyBarb, ArbyPriest, Arbificer etc.

voting should be an option 4/6 or 8/12 should be enough of a majority vote to kick a person although as it is not getting a bad rep can exclude you from things.

We've been asking for a rep system/in-quest-kick-system for how long?
[Though I know of a specific guild on Sarlona that would horribly abuse the in-quest-kick-system, kicking right before finish, since they already mistreat people out of their guild whom run with them (including kicking anyone that disconnects even for a moment, near the latter part of a quest). So it's a give and take.]

But yeah, the number of times text-chat has been an issue [in my encounters] over the years and years of playing is nearly nil [with the exception of one person, who text-spammed me over a year, making new alts each squelch, and finally got her guild in on it. If this announcement addresses that kind of thing, at least that's a positive.]

The Trolls most known on a server, however, tend to prefer voice chat, or simply ignoring you altogether, as they engage in non-conversational griefing.

So without the implementation of some sort of anti-griefing system- even one with its own flaws- most griefing still won't be addressed by this announcement or any changes it derives.

Originally Posted by Xeraphim

Fly? That would break every quest in the game. You would see folks falling from the sky in Korthos and dying. It would be a rain of newbs.

Originally Posted by Dandonk

Yeah. It's not "we nuked the city from orbit", it's "the city experienced a brief population drop". Check.

Verbal abuse is 'chat' abuse. This is not meant to indicate that we are actively recording voice-chat. We have record of text chat. That is what we will monitor.

-River

Yes, that was stated in your op. How is verbal abuse to be proven? Verbal is not text after all.

I seriously doubt (but would be NSA lvl scary) to consider that Turbine is using a voice-to-text program on all verbal communications happening.

edit... oh wait. turbine is doing nothing over actual vocal abuse. You were referring to "verbal" in the case instance of "verbal" vs "physical" abuse.

I'll take it to me that vocal abuse will still happen and Turbine isn't going to do anything about it as they lack the tools and the manpower for immediate responses necessary to "tune in" to the conversation to verify form themselves.

I'm sorry, but your post amounts to very little as most all player already realize all of this. What players desire is out of scope with your post.

Yes, that was stated in your op. How is verbal abuse to be proven? Verbal is not text after all.

I seriously doubt (but would be NSA lvl scary) to consider that Turbine is using a voice-to-text program on all verbal communications happening.

edit... oh wait. turbine is doing nothing over actual vocal abuse. You were referring to "verbal" in the case instance of "verbal" vs "physical" abuse.

I'll take it to me that vocal abuse will still happen and Turbine isn't going to do anything about it as they lack the tools and the manpower for immediate responses necessary to "tune in" to the conversation to verify form themselves.

I'm sorry, but your post amounts to very little as most all player already realize all of this. What players desire is out of scope with your post.

There is a surefire way to stop vocal abuse. Squelch the person and you will no longer hear anything they say over voice chat. Also, you won't have to worry about them joining any groups you lead in the future.

I think Maintaining a Positive Play Environment starts at improving the games and things complained about it. When people play the game are unhappy about something ingame, they tend to take it out on other players. The better solution is to include ignoring in your list of what to do in case you hear/read something you don't like.
I love this game and have taken many breaks over it when I felt it wasn't a positive play environment. Not because of people, but because of the actual game and it's issues.
What you are proposing to me seems like you will turn the game into what these forums have become. If you don't like something, you will report it to get the other person in trouble or waste the GM's time investigating it.

We will not be taking action against non-targeted language that’s automatically blocked by our profanity filter.

As a non native English speaker, I'm having a difficult time understanding this "non-targeted language". Does it mean that I can say "frack!" but not tell someone "you're a fracking son of a pleasure lady!" (replace "frack" with the 4 letter word) as in "targeted language" would be something directed to someone.

As a non native English speaker, I'm having a difficult time understanding this "non-targeted language". Does it mean that I can say "frack!" but not tell someone "you're a fracking son of a pleasure lady!" (replace "frack" with the 4 letter word)

I think he means if you say a word and it's normally changed in chat with a ***** but you then choose to disable profanity filter to see those ***** as actual words like "frack" they will not be enforcing something like that.

When you run into someone who you don't want to hear there is always that /squelch option. Though I do wish you could squelch just the audio portion of chat and not both text and audio at the same time. There are some folks who at times blast music etc when it's not needed and how I would like to silence them without removing all the facilities to communicate with them.

As a non native English speaker, I'm having a difficult time understanding this "non-targeted language". Does it mean that I can say "frack!" but not tell someone "you're a fracking son of a pleasure lady!" (replace "frack" with the 4 letter word) as in "targeted language" would be something directed to someone.

Targeted means directed toward another [player], yes.
As long as you're not actively trying to bypass the filter for those who actually have it on [and given how many normal words it blocks, that's always been a minority of players, in my experience], and you're not cursing out or degrading or insulting another player, you can curse away freely.

Basically, the devs are enforcing- or claiming to enforce more actively- any attacks on other players made through text chat. If you use 'naughty words' or not is irrelevant [unless you're attempting to bypass the filter], that's the only thing they're looking at.

Originally Posted by darkrune

I know you all are in Boston and that is in Mass. and all that, but seriously this is some old school Salem Witch Hunt level audacity stuff right here.

What is in line to prevent a few people from randomly choosing player X that they dont like and constantly making false claims about said person?

This is seriously close to final straw level here and I dont even talk to that many people in game anymore other than guild/channel runs.

Congrats on not reading.

The devs are taking the opposite approach to what you describe.
Or rather- same old, same old.

Originally Posted by Missing_Minds

Yes, that was stated in your op. How is verbal abuse to be proven? Verbal is not text after all.

I seriously doubt (but would be NSA lvl scary) to consider that Turbine is using a voice-to-text program on all verbal communications happening.

edit... oh wait. turbine is doing nothing over actual vocal abuse. You were referring to "verbal" in the case instance of "verbal" vs "physical" abuse.

I'll take it to me that vocal abuse will still happen and Turbine isn't going to do anything about it as they lack the tools and the manpower for immediate responses necessary to "tune in" to the conversation to verify form themselves.

I'm sorry, but your post amounts to very little as most all player already realize all of this. What players desire is out of scope with your post.

I'm getting a 'ha-doi' feel from this thread, yeah.
The sentiment is nice, and perhaps the implementation will actually be worthy of note, in time- but for now, it all seems a pretty silly, obvious reemphasis of the approach that has always been used.

And voice-to-text is pretty simple, hardly NSA level. Anything consumers can get with ease, after all-
But Turbine isn't exactly known for shelling out for non-essentials.

CSM_River, could you perhaps tell us what exactly is DIFFERENT, as of your OP? Right now, conspiracy obsessed individuals aside, you're not making a clear impression on us on exactly what it is your post is meant to accomplish, or indicate change toward.

Originally Posted by Xeraphim

Fly? That would break every quest in the game. You would see folks falling from the sky in Korthos and dying. It would be a rain of newbs.

Originally Posted by Dandonk

Yeah. It's not "we nuked the city from orbit", it's "the city experienced a brief population drop". Check.

I know you all are in Boston and that is in Mass. and all that, but seriously this is some old school Salem Witch Hunt level audacity stuff right here.

What is in line to prevent a few people from randomly choosing player X that they dont like and constantly making false claims about said person?

This is seriously close to final straw level here and I dont even talk to that many people in game anymore other than guild/channel runs.

A few years back I was given a warning. The warning originated because someone reported me because I told him I will play how I want, not how he wants me to play. This thread is nothing new, GM's have been doing this in game for years. But I still stand by my original statement. That positive playing environment starts with improving/fixing the game, not the players.

I'm confused. How does reporting people and turning the game into a massive tattle fest make it a "Positive Play Environment?" I see that as doing nothing but causing more problems. As I see it the game already has means to take care of those who act poorly, as has been mentioned multiple times already if you're unhappy with someone you can squelch and report them.

I get that you want to punish bad behavior, but what are you actually doing to promote good behavior? You can't simply get rid of the bad apples and expect that no other apples will turn bad.

So tell me CSM_River what is Turbine's plan to actually promote positive play?

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